


Radiolarian

by TheSteelChimera



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: BEYOND LIGHT SPOILERS, Gen, Vex - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:16:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27601283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSteelChimera/pseuds/TheSteelChimera
Summary: An injured Guardian gets trapped with a Vex hobgoblin and find themselves at a stalemate.An exploration on Exos, concept based on the new lore from Beyond Light. Barely canon compliant, mostly headcanon. Class agnostic.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Radiolarian

**Author's Note:**

> I normally try and stick to strict canon compliance, and Destiny's lore is very detailed.  
> But, this was fun to write and exists now.  
> (I do not know why the spoilers tag is in caps, oh well)

This was a box. An inescapable, metal box.

I paced the edges, trying to a way out, to no avail. Neither my Light nor Stasis could help me reach out of this area. All I could do was wait for Ghost to reach someone and come back to fetch me.

We’d tried rezzing me outside, to no avail, and I was too far away from the surface for a reliable transmat. I was well and truly stuck.

I resolved to sit in a corner and wait. I didn’t know how many hours had passed until something clattered to the floor in front of me. I reached for my rifle, bringing it up to level the sights at the intruder.

The Vex Hobgoblin in front of me nimbly dodged the bullet I fired, the magazine clicked, empty. I tossed the rifle aside, it fired at me. I took two of its six shots, one to the stomach, the other to the shoulder.

My arm twitched.

I reached for my sword, but cried out, unable to lift my arm higher than horizontal.

I was hit with line rifle fire, I collapsed to one knee as part of my hip become more air than metal. I panted, wheezing in pain that didn’t really exist but probably should.

I looked up to meet the Hobgoblin’s eye, expected to stare down the sights of a Line Rifle and meet my end.

Could I even be rezzed if my Ghost wasn’t there when I died?

I felt something leak and my body lose strength. I glanced down, I was bleeding. Black Exo blood flowing from my abdomen, slowly, lazily. I clamped my hand over it.

Oh how easily I had been felled by a single Vex in this pit. I should’ve just killed it. I still should. I should just summon some paracausality and put the sharpened edges of my will through this thing.

I did exactly that, but missed. My aim was off with one hand and now I was feeling woozy.

The Hobgoblin suddenly stopped, and lowered its rifle. I eyed it suspiciously as it approached.

I retreated until it had me backed against the wall. Its glowing eye met mine, we stared. I saw its head tilt towards the wound in my stomach. I didn’t feel it, it was too deep to hurt, only the superficial caused pain.

It crouched down and began to cry.

Not like humans cried. It cried like an Exo.

It was purring, a low infrasonic rumble of a sound, inaudible to most anyone except Ghosts, Exos and probably elephants. It was a sound that was felt more than heard, and only Exos made it. Some Ghosts, mine included, learned to imitate it to soothe their Guardians when distressed. As machines, we couldn’t cry, no tears to spill, no lungs to sob. But we could, and did, purr.

And this Vex was making the same sound. The sound of grief and pain, the sound of compassion and acknowledgment of that pain, of soothing and healing contact.

And it felt good. I felt the pain fade, not a lot, just a little. The deep resonance hitting the same spot it always did, calming me down.

Reflexively, I began to purr too. This happened every time, one Exo would start purring, and any others in the vicinity would feel the urge to follow. Most of the time, we did, congregating around or near whoever was injured or distressed and engaging in what ended up being called “group therapy”. The purr itself was subtle. But a pile of half-asleep Exos in a corner? Not so much.

I met gazes with this Hobgoblin both of us probably surprised. I knew I was.

The purr continued and I felt myself relax, against my will. At some point the pitch changed, uncomfortably so, a frequency I’d never heard at a speed that made my insides twitch and writhe, I felt my back arch as the needle-like pain intensified, trying to flinch away from it. I purred louder to counter the sound, trying to drown out the Vex’s sound with my own. The clash sounded discordant and wrong.

The damn thing was going to kill me with my own soothing mechanism. How cruel.

Mercifully, and to my surprise, it stopped almost as fast as it started. I kept going, distantly wishing for a privacy I didn’t have. I was alone for only a few moments before my unwilling fellow prisoner in this pit joined back in, harmonizing with me.

It’d been a while since anyone, anything, harmonized with me. My Ghost tried, but we hadn’t quite found the right frequency yet. And I hadn’t been in a… “group therapy” session with other Exos in a while.

I felt better. I looked at my wound and almost startled myself out of harmony.

The gap in my side had filled in. I expected to find the same wound, the same black fluid leaking from somewhere inside me. But instead I found a thin plate of metal, smooth, covering the area and stemming the flow. It followed the curve of my side, under the armour, in a dark metallic hue, like… tarnished brass or cobalt.

I looked at the Vex again. It was crouching in front of me.

“What did you do to me?” My hand returned to my mended side.

If it was turning me Vex, if that’s what that was, weaponizing an Exo’s purr into a conversion tool…

A flicker in the music, deeper, relaxing. A reaction in concept-space appearing in my head, a distant blurry image and feeling. I struggled for a moment trying to understand what I was seeing before landing on the meaning: [construct|harden|repair]

It healed me. The purr was a healing mechanism, Vex used it to construct their structures by literally resonating material into place in radiolarian environments. The same song repaired whatever metallic structures they made. The Vex built their cities by singing them into existence. How poetic.

And deeply unsettling.

“How?”

[self|together harden|bond|carry]

“I don’t understand.” Interpreting the impressions, the vague near-abstract concepts I was getting was difficult.

[self|adjacent return|break]

I balked, fear racing through me as I recognized the sound of shattering glass and radiolaria, resonated into my head. I couldn’t even hear what the Vex was actually singing over the concepts I was receiving.

[return|return lost]

“Lost?” I repeated, unsure how I was understanding any of this, deeply afraid of whatever Vex corruption had already entered my mind.

I felt fine, I still felt like me, but…

Could I be rezzed ever again after this? Was it too late for me already? Like Kabr, like Asher, would I lose my connection to the Light? Slowly become Vex?

[simulation|hub|Pyramidion return]

“Io is gone.”

[self|adjacent wrong|dead return|fix|convert]

I scrambled to my feet, feeling slightly dizzy. I noticed I’d left a small puddle of fluid where I’d sat. There was a blue flicker in it. I’d never really seen much of my own blood, I was usually dead soon after it got spilled and my Ghost did a good job of picking up every piece of me to put me back together. When I did live, I didn’t exactly pay much attention to whatever was leaking from my body. Guardians didn’t leave blood behind.

But here… I’d lost blood, and there was no way to put it back.

I was suddenly mesmerized by the blue flicker in the inky black liquid. It reminded me of something.

[self|adjacent|fractal wrong|dead tear|remove|Taken]

The concept of Taking wasn’t one the Vex knew in so many words, but I did. It showed me a concept and I interpreted it. To it, I was the same as the Vex who had been Taken. Removed from the Collective.

That implied I had once been part of it, had once been Vex. I stared at the synapse-shape flickers in my own spilled fluid.

“I’m not Vex, I’m an Exo.” I told it resolutely, there had to have been some sort of miscommunication, somewhere. This entire situation was, after all, unprecedented.

[Taken|Exo|Taken wrong|dead try|curiosity|destroy return|fix|convert]

How typical, Vex curiosity was tied to breaking stuff. I scoffed.

“I’m fine the way I am, thank you.”

A long pause, a break in the background noise of song.

[confusion]

That was… the only way I could understand the sheer cacophony that it gave me. It was confused. That or I was confused. Either way I found myself staring in its eye again.

We sat in silence.

[Taken|Exo]

And the purring stopped. It left me alone.

I had the feeling that was an insult.

**Author's Note:**

> I did say this wasn't canon compliant.  
> The new lore from Beyond Light is very good and really left us with answers... and more questions. I can't wait for the raid to tell us more.


End file.
